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Four Acts

Andre Babyn

A DEATH

It’s midway through the final turn, when she’s just relaxed her hands from underneath her seat, that something cracks in the steering column. Before he would have laughed at the suggestion that he was driving recklessly or going too fast.

“I know this car, babe.”

The safest place in that country was atop the hill, looking down from among the cattle.

A PAGEANT OF A FUNERAL

To his in-law’s horror, his no-good pals pour out a good half-inch of their Budweisers as the coffin is lowered. One of them pats the iron respirator snaking its way towards him.

“She was good pussy, man.”

He made his decision then.

There were two sets of pall-bearers: one for the coffin, one for the iron lung.

A MOTEL

On the edge of another town. Every morning he goes out to check the help-wanted ads posted at the grocery store and in the career centre. When he returns the motel proprietor greets him sitting in a folding chair. Once he comes home to find a Korean couple rehearsing their ballroom dance routine in the parking lot, hands clasped in the noon sun.